Ice
by blacktop
Summary: Even the simple things, like removing impacted ice and building a normal life, confound John Reese as the winter drags on. Taylor Carter unwittingly lends a helping hand. A drabble written for the Ordinary Tasks challenge on POI Discussion Forum.


Stubborn ice chipped slightly but refused to crack under his assault.

Reese took another whack. Shadows hovering over the thick crust on the top step of Carter's apartment building made the ice particularly tough. But with another blow the mini-glacier split.

He paused to lean on the pick axe, balancing a boot on one prong to survey his progress.

He had been at the task for thirty minutes, working his way methodically up from the bottom, demolishing the impacted ice chunk by chunk. The wide bottom step was cleared completely; the channel through the next three steps was narrower, but a strip of gray stone was bare of ice now.

Using his boots as a guide, he measured the width of the path he had carved. It was broad enough to easily fit his, so he was sure her smaller ones would pass without slipping.

When Joss had armed him and her son with two shovels and sent them into the frigid morning to tackle the remains of a sudden ice storm, Reese had silently rebelled against the chore.

Too domestic, too public, too compromised.

Neighbors looking out from the houses across the street could see him. They would draw their inferences; make up stories or truths about his habits, his connections, and his commitments. Was this risk to Joss worth it? How could he measure the simple threat of icy steps against this danger of exposure?

Was this everyday obligation yet another part of normal they had to give up to remain safe?

But he knew how predictably paranoid he would sound if he voiced these concerns out loud. So he accepted her hot oatmeal breakfast and the promise of hot chocolate to come and kept his fears to himself.

He wondered if the black knit cap she insisted he wear was just for protection against the cold or for disguise. He knew his wool allergy was going to kick up by the end of the morning, but he pulled the scratchy cap low over his forehead anyway. He thought he looked like a cat burglar casing his next heist, but at least Taylor, wrapped in an innocent blue parka, gave him cover.

The block was quiet under its blanket of white cement: no cars, no pedestrians, a genderless figure in a bloated red down coat pounded on knee-high piles of snow at the corner. The glossy sheen of the white sun was almost tropical, so bright and clear it seemed to mock the frozen scene below.

After a futile six minutes with the flimsy shovel, Reese had stopped to curse the tool. It was useless against the ice on the stairs. In contrast, Taylor had made some headway on the street below, carving a jagged path from the bottom step to the sidewalk.

Without a word, the boy trudged across the street to knock on the door of the brownstone opposite.

Too quickly, an old man with a ruff of kinky hair and a short plaid robe strapped around his body, answered. Taylor spoke a few sentences which sent the man into a fit of laughter that ended in a cough. While tiny clouds of warm air condensed before the boy's face, the man retreated into the house, returning moments later with a brutal-looking pick axe.

Taylor slung the axe over his shoulder and high-stepped through a snowy embankment back to Reese.

"I promised Mr. Rubenstein we would clear off his sidewalk after we finished with ours."

"And me?" Reese shuffled his feet and then stamped them to ward off the numbness.

"I said you were the hired hand. He said, 'Like in those westerns?' I said yeah and he laughed."

Grinning, Taylor handed Reese the axe and returned to his own work.

xxxPOIxxxPOIxxx

Swinging the heavy head of the axe made slow work, but the whap, whap of metal splitting ice was satisfying.

The rhythmic stretch of shoulder and back reminded him of childhood summers when he learned to pitch hay with a fork twice as tall as he was.

Balancing, stumbling, letting the tool fly in an arc, stabbing the dry sweet hay. Copying the movements of the bigger boys as best he could, mystified by their whispers about cars and whiskey and girls. They never teased him or corrected his awkward motions, just chuckled at their own adult secrets and let him find his way.

Warming up despite the chill, his muscles clenched and burned now with the memory of those lost days, when anything was possible, when everything was open and waiting for him.

Below his position on the steps, he watched Taylor's erratic progress through the drifts of wet snow.

The boy's movements were irregular and inefficient, but Reese kept his mouth shut; he could give advice or orders, but he doubted either would be appreciated.

Taylor was flailing at the snow, jerking his elbows at odd angles, taking twice as much time as absolutely necessary to get the job done. But Reese figured there was no use setting off a teenage sulk or losing his partner altogether. So he kept quiet: the boy would make his own way.

As he worked, Reese stacked the irregular bricks of ice to the left side of the staircase, forming an inelegant wall of gray mottled blocks.

The revealed stone of each step was pock-marked by salt, dingy, but clear of ice and secure for her now.

If he tried, he hoped he could build these ordinary tasks into something solid, a life approaching normal. Not a fortress exactly, but at least a little corner of safety in his unsettled world.

Shouldering the pick axe, he retrieved the shovel and headed across the street to Mr. Rubenstein's house to join Taylor, already hard at work on their next job.


End file.
